Thursday, 07 April 2016

Learning to walk the tightrope

Last night before bed I was flipping through TV and "The Fault In Our Stars" was on tv and I got sucked in (shhhhhh, it's a good movie!) and I thought back to the post I had written about it previously. I thought about where I was when I wrote that post. I was about 3 months past a pretty big heartbreak and one I was still recovering from at that time (which is part of why I think the movie hit me so hard). I was absolutely nowhere near being in a place to date and I knew that for my head and my heart, I needed to take some time, figure out who I truly was and what I truly wanted in order to find someone who would complement my life in the ways that I wanted and deserved.

I still really like the line that I highlighted in that post: "You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you."

It is true, we do have a great say in who we open our hearts and lives to. But in that say there is a lot of risk inherent in the process. While we may choose to trust that everyone in the world operates with the same level of authenticity and integrity that we do, the sad reality is that many fall very, very short. I spent close to a year with a man who didn't just fall short of my level of integrity but spent a year lying to me, lying about me and wasting both my time and my love. Once all of the deceit came to light, getting over him got extraordinarily easy - it's difficult to still love someone who spoke so poorly of you to others just to serve their own needs.

However, as I find myself back in the dating world, looking for that real thing that I thought I had found, I find myself having to balance on the tightrope of still being who I am, maintaining my openness and my love while realizing that my gut actually knows a lot more than I have sometimes given it credit for. Dating can create a lot of humorous stories but it also can create a lot of frustration and disappointment but it is part of the process and what is required in order to find a romantic relationship and if that's what you want (and it is what I want) then you have to run the gauntlet. The key is to maintain who you are through the gauntlet, even when it isn't necessarily easy.